What is the Startup Showdown?

The Startup Showdown is a must-attend event for investors, unmanned systems entrepreneurs and technology innovators. We are seeking early-stage, disruptive companies who are creating, innovating or enhancing unmanned systems technologies and applications.

Join us Wednesday, May 2 from 3:45 PM – 5:15 PM in the Starting Point Theater in the XPO Hall for the Startup Showdown!

During the Startup Showdown, five finalists will have six minutes each to pitch their business to the panel, and will then have a six-minute live question and answer session with the judges. All XPONENTIAL 2018 attendees and exhibitors are invited to attend.

AUVSI is pleased to introduce the five finalists!

Asylon is automating the back-end infrastructure of the UAS industry: power, payload, and data. Their drone agnostic, auto battery swap station, DroneHome, allows a drone to operate autonomously, 24/7. The station is cloud-enabled, giving customers a view of critical mission data and payload telemetry in real time from any location in the world.

Copperstone Tech. offers Autonomous Amphibious Robots that can work in harsh terrains where it is dangerous, risky, and costly to send human workers (land and water). Applications: environmental monitoring, geotechnical investigations, bathymetric surveys, soil testing, tool deployment, and water and soil sampling.

Iris Automation is a SF-based, Series-A venture backed company with a team from NASA, Boeing and PhDs in computer vision building an electro-optical Sense & Avoid system for industrial drones. Because of regulation and safety concerns, every UAS needs what we’re building to fly completely autonomously or Beyond-Line-of-Sight. We have paying customers, are actively involved in regulation, and have a massive amount of validation and training data that is growing every day. Here’s a public piece about a recent tech demo with the FAA: https://goo.gl/QbdyF8

Unifly’s Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) solutions connect authorities with pilots to safely integrate drones into the airspace. It also enables manufacturers, developers, and system integrators to easily access data to feed any application they create. Our long-term mission is to bridge the gap between manned and unmanned aviation.

Meet the Judges

Nir Tel-oren
Israel Aerospace Industries

Gareth Keane
Qualcomm Ventures

Jon Rubin
Westbury Group

Rick Clonan
CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity

Thank you to our sponsors:

Finalist Perks

Finalists will receive the following:

One (1) XPO Hall Pass, in addition to the XPO Hall Pass granted to all applicants

Logo recognition on the XPONENTIAL Startup Showdown webpage

Logo recognition in the XPONENTIAL onsite guide adjacent to the StartUp Showdown program description

Grand Prize

The Startup Showdown winner will receive a grand prize worth $35,000 and includes:

Sponsored by:

One year's Startup membership to AUVSI

One (1) 10’x10’ booth at a future AUVSI event of your choice

One (1) General Sponsorship at a future AUVSI event of your choice

Two (2) VIP or highest-level passes for a future AUVSI event of your choice